BMW was present at the Arab Health exhibition held at the Dubai World Trade Center last week and I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Stephan Rauscher, Safety Engineer for BMW Global who explained how BMW is actively involved with passenger safety in their vehicles. Besides the passive features such as your seat belt, there are many electronic features in today’s BMW cars that, through sensors, detect a possibility of collision and accordingly inform the driver or make adjustments to your vehicle. Examples of such situations include your car moving out of the car tracks or detection of an object ahead of you at a slower speed.

Other than these safety features, Stefan also explained about BMW’s call center which is currently not available in the UAE, but is in Kuwait. The call center sends a crash report to an agent informing them of all passengers in the car, the area where the car was hit as well as other data such as the location of the accident. Again, the video below explains how it works by emulating a crash.

As you can see, BMW is really focusing on the safety aspect of their vehicles and considering how fast people tend to drive in the UAE, this is a good thing.

I’ve been reviewing these little HTPC boxes from Zotac for a while now and every few months, a new model lands on our desk. These pizza box shaped computers are targeted towards the home theater enthusiast and, honestly, if the model from last year played full HD 1080p movies just fine, is there a need for a a newer model? Thats what we’re here to find out today with the Zotac Zbox ID-80 Plus.

Packaged in the very familiar box that we have seen with most Zbox PCs of late, the ID-80 comes with the usual power charger and VESA mounting kit that can be attached to the back of your PC to completely hide the computer. Also finally included is an iR receiver and remote- something I’ve been asking Zotac to do through my reviews for quite a while. One thing that I would like them to change is to provide all the drivers and applications on a USB key instead of a CD as some of the Z-BOX PCs, including this one, don’t have an optical drive.

Coming to the design, the ZBOX ID-80 looks pretty much like most of the older ZBOX models that I have reviewed- which is not abad thing. The square shaped flat PC is fairly simple looking with a shiny black finish. The look for ZBOX is getting a bit old but I can understand why Zotac hasn’t focused much on the looks because it comes with a VESA mounting kit which means that it might even be totally hidden from the user.

On the front side, you have audio ports along with an SD card reader, a USB port and the power button with Wi-Fi and Hard Drive LEDs. The top side has another USB 2.0 port while the back features connectors for power, a Wi-Fi antenna, wired LAN, two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports as well as HDMI, DVI and Optical S/PDIF outputs.

It’s no surprise that geeks like me are not necessarily big on fashion. When I don’t have to attend events or meetings, I much prefer being in my jeans and a Polo. However, every once in a while (mainly during shopping festivals with super discounted prices), I’d step into Bloomingdales or Harvey Nichols and treat myself to a couple of nice shirts or even a blazer ( if they’re still called that). Now here’s the thing- different people have different opinions on my purchases. What one person absolutely loves, gets laughed at by another. In the world of fashion, there is no science and there are no analytical benchmarks to prove one thing is better than the other. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

The intro above might seem a bit strange on a tech website but serves a purpose- it’s required reading for the Porsche Design BlackBerry P9981 that I am reviewing today. Ever since it was officially unveiled, I have read countless opinions on how sexy or how ugly the P9981 is. I too, considered the device unattractive when pictures of it were leaked on the web a few months back. But then I held it at it’s launch event in Dubai and suddenly, my opinion started changing. And after playing with it for a few days, my beloved Bold 9900 suddenly feels cheap.

Packaged in a nice box that is almost the size of something you get when buying shoes, the P9981 prepares you with what it has to offer right from the magnetic latch of the packaging. The top layer has the phone and the charging dock nicely cuddled up while going a layer deep reveals the Porsche branded battery (same capacity as the Bold 9900), your membership card and some manuals. Going deeper to the last layer unveils the premium headset, USB cable and four charging plugs serving different parts of the world. Interestingly, no holster is included in the package which tells you that this is not a device that you want to keep hidden inside anything. You can watch our unboxing video here.

The Porsche Design P9981 is essentially the BlackBerry Bold 9900 but in a chassis designed by the company that is associated with being über cool. Gone is the plasticy back and the brushed aluminum looking antenna band, replaced by real premium leather back cover and a shiny stainless steel band. Even the individual keys on the P9981’s keyboard are made of metal instead of plastic. Although it might not look very comfortable, the keyboard on the P’9981 is very easy to type on- not as good as the Bold 9900 but still pretty good. Above the keyboard, you have the four traditional BlackBerry keys and the trackpad- all of which are taller in size and easier to press. The hard metallic edges along with the leather back give the P9981 a feel that is like no other Smartphone. You know you’re carrying something that is premium.

This new enclosure is slightly bigger in size compared to the Bold 9900 but not much has changed as far as layout and positioning of buttons and connectors is concerned. The MicroSD slot has been moved a bit higher making it easier to manage your memory card and you no longer need to remove the battery to access it either. Other than that, all the other buttons and connectors are pretty much in the same spot as the Bold 9900. One change I would have liked to see is the notification LED moved a bit higher so that it sits between the top and front sides of the device- or possibly around the navigation pad.

Even though RIM has been quite successful in the Middle East and Far East, their market share in the US and Europe has been on a decline ever since the iPhone and Android devices were released a few years back. It looks like RIM’s co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have decided to step down and let Thorsten Heins take charge as the President and CEO.

On the transition to CEO by Mr. Heins, Mr. Lazaridis said, “There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership. Jim and I went to the Board and told them that we thought that time was now. With BlackBerry 7 now out, PlayBook 2.0 shipping in February and BlackBerry 10 expected to ship later this year, the company is entering a new phase, and we felt it was time for a new leader to take it through that phase and beyond. Jim, the Board and I all agreed that leader should be Thorsten Heins.”

RIM's ex-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis

Mike Lazaridis, former Co-Chair and Co-CEO, has become Vice Chair of RIM’s Board and Chair of the Board’s new Innovation Committee. As Vice Chair, he will work closely with Mr. Heins to offer strategic counsel, provide a smooth transition and continue to promote the BlackBerry brand worldwide. Jim Balsillie remains a member of the Board. “I agree this is the right time to pass the baton to new leadership, and I have complete confidence in Thorsten, the management team and the company,” he said. “I remain a significant shareholder and a Director and, of course, they will have my full support.”

Mr. Heins said he believes that RIM has tremendous potential. He joined RIM from Siemens Communications Group in December 2007 as Senior Vice President for Hardware Engineering and became Chief Operating Officer for Product and Sales in August 2011.

“Mike and Jim took a bold step 18 months ago when RIM purchased QNX to shepherd the transformation of the BlackBerry platform for the next decade,” Mr. Heins said. “We are more confident than ever that was the right path. It is Mike and Jim’s continued unwillingness to sacrifice long-term value for short-term gain which has made RIM the great company that it is today. I share that philosophy and am very excited about the company’s future.”

Mr. Heins said that RIM has a strong foundation on which to build. “We have a strong balance sheet with approximately $1.5 billion in cash at the end of the last quarter and negligible debt. We reported revenue of $5.2 billion in our last quarter, up 24% from the prior quarter, and a 35% year-to-year increase in the BlackBerry subscriber base, which is now over 75 million.”

Mr. Heins said, “BlackBerry 7 has been well received. We are very excited about PlayBook 2.0 and BlackBerry 10. The reception of our products at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show was encouraging.”

He continued, “RIM earned its reputation by focusing relentlessly on the customer and delivering unique mobile communications solutions. We intend to build on this heritage to expand BlackBerry’s leadership position.”

RIM's new CEO, Thorsten Heins

Mr. Heins said that RIM has grown quickly. “As with any company that has grown as fast as we have, there have been inevitable growing pains,” he said. “We have learned from those challenges and, I believe, we have and will become a stronger company as a result.

“Going forward, we will continue to focus both on short-term and long-term growth, strategic planning, a customer- and market-based product approach, and flawless execution. We are in the process of recruiting a new Chief Marketing Officer to work closely with our product and sales teams to deliver the most compelling products and services.”

The Porsche Designed BlackBerry P’9981 has officially landed in our office and like any fashion product, it has it’s share of fans and critics. It will take us a few days to properly use the device and give our honest opinion but until then, enjoy the unboxing of this deluxe item designed by Porsche Design and RIM.

Please note that the onboard memory on the P’9981 is 8GB and not 4GB as mentioned in the video.

WhatsApp, the extremely popular cross-device messaging platform that works on the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Symbian and Windows Phone has become the target of a hoax. The two messages circulating amongst it’s various users are as follows:

WhatsApp is going to cost us money soon. The only way that it will stay free is if you are a frequent user i.e. you have at least 10 people you are chatting with. To become a frequent user send this message to 10 people who receive it (2 ticks) and your WhatsApp logo should turn Red to indicate a frequent user.

and

“Whatsapp is shutting down on 28th jan Message from Jim Balsamic (CEO of Whatsapp) we have had an over usage of user names on whatsapp Messenger. We are requesting all users to forward this message to their entire contact list. If you do not forward this message, we will take it as your account is invalid and it will be deleted within the next 48 hours. Please DO NOT ignore this message or whatsapp will no longer recognise your activation. If you wish to re-activate your account after it has been deleted, a charge of 25.00 will be added to your monthly bill. We are also aware of the issue involving the pictures updates not showing. We are working diligently at fixing this problem and it will be up and running as soon as possible. Thank you for your cooperation from the Whatsapp team”

WhatsApp posted a message on it’s official blog stating that these messages are a hoax and there is no truth to them. So if you’re a WhatsApp user and have received any of the above two messages, please do not forward it to everyone on your list. Simply chuck it.

Portable hard drives have become the quint-essential accessory for a notebook user and with newer notebooks coming in with smaller but faster SSD drivers, the requirement for a large capacity drive to put your media and backups on is higher than ever. We take a look a quick look at one such product today- the WD My PassPort for Mac.

What makes this drive “for Mac” is the fact that it comes pre-formatted with HFS+ which is the native file system used by Macs. This means that you can pretty much plug this drive in any of the newer Macs and use it right away for reading and writing files as well as creating backups with Time Machine. Let me point out that any portable hard drive is capable of this but most of them come formatted with FAT32 or NTFS and need to be reformatted by your Mac to HFS+ which is just an extra step.

The other thing that makes this WD drive “for Mac” is, obviously, the design. It’s almost a pre-requisite for any Mac product to look good and My Passport does well but not necessarily great in this aspect. I like the minimal design but the plastic enclosure isn’t very Mac like. Also, I found the drive to be a tad bit chunky- especially when put next to the MacBook Air. However, this has more to do with the current level of technology than anything else. If you want something slimmer, you will have to settle for lower capacity for now.

My Passport for Mac has a pretty clean design with just one USB port and an LED next to it. WD bundles a USB cable with the drive along with warranty information. On the drive, WD bundles two applications that you can install on your Mac. WD Drive Utilities lets monitor the status of your hard drive using SMART as well as run diagnostics and quick tests along with erasing the drive. WD Security on the other hand password protects your hard drive. An update to both these utilities was available for download when I initially launched them which is good as it tells you that WD is keeping stuff up to date.

There’s not really much else that can be said about USB 2.0 portable drives. Their performance has been saturated by the speed of the USB 2.0 port and that holds true for My Passport for Mac as well which posted speeds of just under 40 MB/s in both read and write tests. While this is good enough for general reading and writing of files, expect to wait a while if you plan on moving high-definition movies to and from this drive. Initial Time Machine backup will also take a while but subsequent ones should be fast.

Priced at around AED 800, the WD My Passport for Mac is quite a bit on the pricey side- something Mac users are accustomed to. While it offers a decent design and plenty of storage, I see no reason why you cannot get one of the other, cheaper USB 2.0 alternatives even if it isn’t for the Mac and just format it in HFS+ and use it like this drive. The added utilities bundled with the drive don’t really add much value and can be found around the web for free.

2012 has the potential to become one of the best years for Apple fans. With the amount of products refreshes as well as one possible new device, there are plenty of reason for iFans to work hard and save up some cash for these devices this year:

iPad 3

Apple usually refreshes the iPad in the first quarter of the year and hopefully, this year should be no different. From what the rumor-mill is suggesting, the new iPad should have a retina display giving it the same gorgeous screen that the iPhone 4 sports. To power that high of a resolution, you also need some serious hardware so a quad-core equipped iPad doesn’t sound too out of place. Cameras should also be hopefully updated considering the number of people that actually take pictures from their iPad and how bad they currently are. Other than these visible changes, Apple will probably add Bluetooth 4.0 for low power connectivity with other expected devices.

MacBook Air & MacBook Pro

Intel is launching their Ivy bridge CPU in April so it’s a given that Apple will update their notebooks. However, the question is whether we will see a 15″ version of the Air or the MacBook Pro line slimmed down. With this new generation of CPUs, the graphics horsepower would have improved enough for the Air to start competing with the Pro so Apple will need to decide which direction to take. Remember, Steve Jobs stated that the Air is the future design direction for Apple laptops and the army of wanna-bes in the form of Ultrabooks certainly suggests that Apple will make its move.

iOS 6

Towards the summer, Apple will hold it’s annual event detailing the future of their new mobile OS. I honestly don’t know what they will show but with iOS breaking away the requirement for a computer to activate it, my guess is that Apple will try and make their new devices more computer-like. At the top of my wish list sits an accessible file system that could hopefully allow us to add attachments of any kind to email without jail breaking the device. Also, the UI of iOS is getting a bit old and now that Google has hired the WebOS design guru Matias Duarte, it might be time for Apple to show what they have been working on.

iPhone 5

Wth no change in the form factor, The iPhone 4S didn’t create much of a stir on the Internet on the design front. However, this year should be different and Apple is expected to change the design of the iPhone. Will it sport a bigger screen or do away with the home button is anybody’s guess, but do expect to see a new iPhone that also looks new this time around.

iTV

If introduced, the iTV will be the product that the tech industry will talk most about this year. My guess is that Apple will heavily involve Siri- you will probaly be able to tell your iTV to bring up an episode of Lost when Locke opens the hatch instead of remembering episode number. Or telling it to get details of the comedian/politician that is on your screen at that time. There is plenty of potential with what Apple can possibly do with iTV.

New iPods

Last and certainly not the least, we should be expecting new iPods especially since we didn’t see any new models in 2011. While the iPod touch will probably be something between an iPhone 4s and iPhone 5, what I am really interested in is the new Nano. Using the low powered Bluetooth 4.0 the Nano could easily beome the Siri enabled device on your wrist that communicates with your iPhone or iPad and get things done. It could become the window to your other, more powerful iDevice.

So there you have it- a list of potential devices that Apple might be releasing this year. What do you think? Is there one that you don’t agree with or one that you think I might have missed out on?

Summers are usually very long in the UAE and thus, everyone tries to be as creative as they can to make the most of outdoors during the few “winter” months. I too, came up with an idea when I moved into my villa last year which has some garden space- to set up an outdoor theatre. While this idea is more for folks that have a bit of a backyard, I see no reason for it not working with people with rather large balconies that some of the older buildings in the UAE sport. So grab some popcorn while I detail the components I selected, why I selected them, and what you can expect as an end result.

In order to build a list of components, I had to take into consideration the extremely humid weather conditions in the UAE that last pretty much all year long. What this means is that you cannot leave most electronic devices outdoors- unless they are specifically certified for outdoor usage. Thus, portability became a part of the planning process. In total, I chose four components, three of which are required while the fourth one is up to you to decide upon.

The first thing you need is a projector and considering that you’ll be using it outdoors, you would want one that has a high Lumens rating so the brightly lit sky during a full moon doesn’t take too much away from your experience. To project, you also need a good screen, however, you can easily use your boundary wall to project upon, so the screen isn’t necessarily required. With the picture all set, you need a sound system- something that is quick and easy to setup and sounds decent. Finally, you need a media streamer to connect to your projector and sound system to feed movies or TV shows to.

I remember when Apple announced the iPhone 4S some time back and how “disappointed” many of the users on my Twitter timeline were. I kept insisting that it was actually a pretty decent upgrade and even though it looks identical to the iPhone 4- the new internals justified the new iPhone. Thus, I was amongst the first people in line to pick up the new iPhone 4S when it was officially announced for the UAE market. It’s been two weeks since then and I figured that was enough time to write about the device.

Lets start with the pricing and plans for the iPhone 4S- the iPhone 4S is available in capacities of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB in black and white. You can purchase the device from either Etisalat, du or directly from Apple.  The following table lists the price of the buying the device outright from the carriers or Apple.

If you don’t want to commit to any data packages, the Apple Store deal is the cheapest, however, du gives you 1GB of free data per month for a year (as long as you spend over 100 Dirhams per month with them) while Etisalat gives you 500MB of data for the first three months with no strings attached. Other than purchasing the unit outright, Etisalat also offers a discount if you sign up for an annual commitment on a post-paid line. While du also offers something similar, it is only for business users and not the consumer so I’m not going to go into that, however you can click here and find more on that if you’re interested. The following table lists plans by Etisalat.

I chose to go with Etisalat’s plan 2 which I think offers a pretty good mix of data and voice at a decent price. Having owned the iPhone 4 in black, I chose white for iPhone 4S simply to have something a little different and while I like the white iPhone 4S, I think black still looks better- but that is just my personal opinion or maybe I need time for it to grow on me

Looks-wise, the iPhone 4S is almost identical to the iPhone 4 and you would need a really sharp eye to spot someone carrying one from the other. It has identical dimensions and is just 3 grams heavier which is something you won’t notice even if you’re holding both phones together. Apple has slightly lowered the position of the volume buttons and the mute key on the iPhone 4S while the surrounding antenna has more partitions and in different places- probably to fix the antenna-gate issue that popped up in the iPhone 4 for some. Some of my colleagues carrying the iPhone 4 are happy that Apple hasn’t change the design on the 4S as it doesn’t make their device look like last year’s model, which I think is fair to the consumer and so much better than a companies that replaces their top-of-the-line device every quarter.

Even the packaging on the iPhone 4S is identical to the previous model- with the exception of 4S written on the box instead of 4. You get the USB plug, the iPod cable and that pin to remove the micro-SIM tray from the iPhone along with the usual warranty and quickstart guides.